


Cage

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Gaslighting, Initiation, M/M, Manipulation, Power Exchange, Treachery, Vulnerability, self mutilation (not graphic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5245064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Tell me, then, William Whele,” Gabriel sighs, leaning in enough to taste that panicked warmth of sweat and terror of the boy he holds, bent backwards over the endless drop to sand and ash. “Does the little lost son still want to be a martyr? Or a man?”</i>
</p>
<p>William Whele comes to arrange an alliance.</p>
<p>Set several years before season 1, but is entirely canon. No spoilers, merely speculation. Read on!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knucklewhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knucklewhite/gifts).



> **IMPORTANT NOTE:** the self-mutilation tag is related to the rib breaking initiation rite that we see on the show later on, it has no mention of cutting, self harm or suicide attempts.
> 
> A HUGE thank you to our darling [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for being fearless and wonderful in beta'ing this piece :D

If one were to squint and tilt their head, it rather resembles a church. Not the glistening, modern temple of William’s own, surrounded by ornate green gardens and marble statuary, but an older church, the kind he’s seen only in books. Rough-hewn stone and unyielding floor, dark shadows dancing where firelight scatters them into shuddering. There is no altar before him, but what might suffice as one instead, taken to its basest definition as a place to exalt a greater power.

The rock throne is certainly that, without a doubt, set upon a dais and ensconced in soft fabrics. From where he’s gathered them, the silvered candelabras, the trappings of luxury, William can only begin to imagine. He tries not to, and when a door swings creaking open from behind him, he lowers his eyes to the ground instead. His knees ache. He never has to kneel to pray in his own church.

They kneel to him, instead.

Footsteps seem to echo through the space, though William’s breath sounds hollow. The entire place is almost out of this world and partially in another. He had had to make the pilgrimage up to it several times, crawling over rocks and jumping a few precarious jagged crevices to get to easier ground.

He came because he had heard rumours.

Now he sits and wonders if perhaps they’re warranted. If he’s about to be enlightened.

A hand sets in his hair and William’s lips part as his eyes close. The sound he makes is too little to register, helpless and soft, and he feels his heart fight its way against the cage of his ribs like a canary in a mine.

“I’ve seen you here before,” a voice purrs, and William feels his skin break out in goosebumps even as it heats. “Little boy lost, hmm?”

William tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, to ease it away and steady his voice. He tries and fails, and the powerful preacher’s voice he’s spent years honing cracks like he’s going through puberty again.

“I’m not lost,” he says. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

He lifts his eyes at the laugh that rings raucous through the cavernous cathedral of stone. Eyries they call them, but this a far cry from the tawdry den of iniquity that Michael keeps above Vega. William’s gaze manages only so far up as Gabriel’s knees as he steps by, boots thudding against the floor.

“I’ve come here, more than once, to meet with you,” William continues, brow creasing as Gabriel’s laugh echoes to quiet. “It’s not exactly a quick trip from Vega, you know, and I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

A hum, so deep the ground seems to vibrate with it, before the archangel turns on his heel and returns to stand before William again. Gracefully, with merely a sigh of air around him, Gabriel lowers into a crouch, head tilting as he looks at the boy before him. Nothing more than that. Human and little and entitled. Gabriel knows who he is, he has heard his sermons echoing in the shiny reinforced hotels in Vega. He has felt every word against himself as an irritating mite, crawling and trying to get under.

The boy hasn’t the power to get under anyone’s skin.

Not yet.

“Do you believe in a merciful God, boy?” Gabriel asks, watching William’s brows furrow further, those pretty lips part before Gabriel’s arm snakes out and his hand grasps in chocolate hair and he tugs, bringing the boy closer, into a deeper bow. “A kind father?”

William catches himself on his hands, pressed to polished stone. The release of pressure from sitting in a kneel for so long flares stabs of pain along his legs, through his hips and into his back. A grimace curls his lips.

“Yes,” he says. “In theory, yes. In practice, I’ve never known either.”

“My Father was kind, once,” Gabriel muses, the grip on the boy’s hair not relenting at all as he holds him still. “Just. Curious. Wise. And then He made you.” The toe of a heavy boot, covered in dust and smears of older, crueler things, comes into William’s field of vision and he closes his eyes not to see. “And then He abandoned His first children, in favor of you.”

“And now He’s abandoned us,” William hisses.

The hand in his hair eases its grip and slips hot down his cheek and to beneath his chin, lifting it so he watches closely the angel before him. Though he and Michael are twins, there is nothing of that angel in this one. William can feel himself begin to tremble.

“And so one fallen son seeks another?” Gabriel asks him softly.

This is enough, at least, a first step towards some sort of mutual understanding, that William musters a smile. It’s as winning as he can make it, though he doesn’t dare flash his teeth in the broad grin he gives his parishioners. His eyes lift at the corners, and narrow, as he takes in the deeply set eyes of the angel before him, roiling black as stormclouds and vastly more powerful. This is no earthly aptitude for destruction - William sees in his gaze the manifestation of God Himself.

Wherever He is.

“Yes,” William tells him, in a breath, and his eyes widen as Gabriel grins in genuine and terrible amusement. “Yes. I’ve reached for Him. I’ve spent - I’ve spent my entire life, seeking, for Him or His Chosen One or even a whisper. The Bible spoke of a small voice inside us but there’s nothing,” William laughs, as Gabriel releases him and stands and William’s whole useless mortal weakness manifests in trembling. “There’s nothing now but you. The only real might I have ever seen exists in you, and nowhere else.”

“Flattery,” hums the angel, taking the steps necessary to get to his throne before he sinks into it and brings a hand up to rub against his lips. “Flattery you are very good at, William, very good. Your sermons sing praises of a God you claim to not understand, one whom you do not see as merciful. Bravo.” A laugh, then, sharp and bright. “Truly, it’s quite a skill.”

William swallows, shifting to sit on his hip to ease the pins and needles in his legs. Gabriel lifts his eyes and without thought, without hesitation, William slips to his knees again, obedient.

“My brother lives within Vega, surely you’ve seen _him_.”

“Yes.”

“Surely you’ve felt _that_ power.”

“Michael is nothing -” Another bare movement, a tilt of Gabriel’s chin that is almost reptilian, that is entirely inhuman, and William’s voice breaks again. “Like you are,” he finishes.

“No,” drawls the angel. “No, Michael and I have an unfortunate tendency to never be on the same side of an argument. The problem with being the mirror and the foil for the other. Twins in everything but mind.”

“Exactly,” William answers, voice rising as he sees an opening, or what he desperately hopes - _prays_ would be the wrong word entirely - is an opening. “Exactly that. What has he done but align himself with bureaucrats behind protective walls? What has he accomplished but sleeping with half of Vega’s populace up in his eyrie?” William laughs, and the desperation is as bitter to his ears as it tastes on his tongue.

He’s pathetic. This is pathetic. And he swallows down the bile that rises acrid in his throat as dizziness - from kneeling, from waiting, from anticipation and now sitting at the feet of Gabriel himself - lifts him from himself. He is a Whele, the only heir to a proud name. He is the voice of faith to one of the few remaining outposts of humanity that remains, their source of hope in the face of inevitable, bloody destruction.

And he is begging, on his knees, to save himself and let them all burn.

“What you have done has changed the world,” William tells him, jaw taut. “What he has done is protect himself.”

“He enjoys his creature comforts,” Gabriel allows, crossing one leg over the other and sitting deeper into his throne, watching the boy before him as he remains on his knees, as he shivers and trembles. It is always such a pleasure to see a proud thing prostrate itself. And they all do, eventually.

“Have you?” Gabriel asks after a moment, and William swallows before looking up again. “Enjoyed creature comforts.”

William’s brows draw in and a mirthless laugh passes his lips. He shakes his head, fingers curled against his legs as if he might scratch feeling back into them, or ease the tremors in his hands. Nothing works, and for a moment, William hopes that Gabriel will simply end him here.

Even if he dies on his knees, at least - maybe - he’ll be remembered as a martyr.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he says, with another attempt at laughter. “What are you asking me?”

“Do you lead a comfortable life?” Gabriel rephrases, fanning his fingers beside his mouth in a semblance of a shrug. “Food and shelter and warmth? Opportunities to make something of yourself?” The fingertips land one by one against Gabriel’s bottom lip and he smiles, tilting his head back a little more. “Someone to warm your bed at night? Seeking between warm thighs with fumbling hands?”

William can feel the color drain from his face, he can feel the way his eyes widen and his lips slacken as they part.

“Or,” the angel suggests, sitting forward again, elbow to knee, chin to fist. “Someone seeking between yours, hmm?”

Gaze sharpening, William pushes to sit up straighter, shoulders wide. “Am I comfortable? Enough, but I refuse to sit idly by and play the fiddle while Vega burns. As far as my bed,” William snorts, “it’s a little hard to find time for that when I’m trying to keep a city from the brink of constant self-destruction.”

“Mind your tone, William Whele.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” William hisses, pushing to stand in jagged motions, his legs so numb he feels as if he’s floating above the floor. His face registers the pain, teeth clenched. His cheeks heat and he forces his voice to steady. “I didn’t come here to be humiliated. I came here to work with you. For you.”

“Did you?” Gabriel asks, brows up as he continues to tap his fingertips against his lips before finally setting both feet to the dais and his hands to the arms of his throne. “When you come for allegiance, William, you come with something to offer. Do you have something to offer?”

He pushes to stand, taking one step, and another, and with each unfurls a set of wings, coal-black and so wide they eclipse any and all suggestion of light.

“You come to me with cheap words and a lack of social graces. You come to me demanding I listen when you have nothing to say. Little William came to be a martyr. That, my dear, I can oblige by tossing you from my eyrie and lamenting only the mess you will smear down the mountain.”

Gabriel is close enough, now, to set his hand beneath William’s chin and squeeze, enough that his eyes widen and his lips part and he makes a desperate sound of animal fear.

“No one will remember a rich spoiled child trying to scream in order to make himself heard among men. Men, William, prove their worth. Men come to me with something to give back, instead of selfishly, uselessly taking.” He walks towards the open end of the cool cave, William stumbling backwards along before him, closer and closer until the wind catches William’s hair and tugs it every which way, until Gabriel’s wings ruffle with the force of it.

“Tell me, then, William Whele,” Gabriel sighs, leaning in enough to taste that panicked warmth of sweat and terror of the boy he holds, bent backwards over the endless drop to sand and ash. “Does the little lost son still want to be a martyr? Or a man?”

William grasps Gabriel’s arm, eyes wide in apology for touching him but overcome by instinct, now, with his stomach plummeting already down the mountainside and vertigo spinning the splayed black feathers before him. He holds in desperation, some last vestige of self-preservation when any real quantity of it would have kept him safely in the walls of Vega.

“Please,” he gasps, yelping sharp as he’s tilted back further. “A man! Archangel, a man!”

“You sound like a squirming pup seeking for its mother’s teat,” snarls Gabriel.

“I’ve - I’ve brought you an offering,” pleads William, fingernails curling into hardened leather as he clutches Gabriel’s wrist and the wind tears howling against his back to pull him into the chasm and swallow him whole. This is not salvation. This is not grace.

This is Hell.

And William isn’t going down without a fight.

“Myself,” he says, his shaking whisper nearly lost within the wailing gusts. Gabriel’s eyes roll skyward as if seeking strength from a force that both know isn’t there, and William speaks faster, a rushed flurry of words. “I’m offering you myself, archangel, and with me, comes Vega.”

“With you comes whining and a once great name,” Gabriel drawls, but he doesn’t let go of William’s throat, doesn’t toss him to the swirling wind.

“Still great!” William says. “Still great, archangel, just without direction. Without purpose.”

“You have no control of Vega’s military,” Gabriel points out. “No control of her Council.”

“My father -”

“Holds no sympathy for a weak son.”

For a moment, William’s eyes widen and he has no words with which to defend himself. He holds to Gabriel’s arm, digs his nails in and shakes, from cold and terror and the dire understanding that unless he is the man he believes himself to be, unless he is the man his flock see him as, he will die.

He will die a boy. Not a martyr, not a man.

“My congregation is many times bigger than his ever was,” William whispers. “I have followers seek me out in the streets, most of the V1s find comfort in my words and they outnumber us by thousands.”

Gabriel considers the boy before him, flicks dust from his wings but doesn’t let him go. He’s listening. William’s heart hammers quicker.

“He may have power of the money, of the council, but he does not know his people. They would not follow him. They would not listen.”

“Would they listen to you?”

“Every word,” William swallows, “of whatever I tell them.” With every ounce of willpower it takes, William slowly releases his hold on the archangel, holds his hands out to him in supplication but does not cling. “Every word you say.”

There is a sound from the archangel, inhuman and vast. William thinks of the trumpets that brought down the walls of Jericho, and the seven more that will sound at the end of the world. He thinks of the first words that whispered the universe itself into being and he trembles, but does not break before it.

“What reason is there to trust you, and not presume a trap? How simple it would be to manipulate one so ready to cower into prostrating himself here, to pull me into a false sense of security.”

“You know,” William says, “that Michael would kill me without a second thought if he knew I were here. General Reisen. My father. Any one of them would take a knife to my throat if they even thought it true. They’ve no understanding of real power, archangel. They plant their flags in morals that died when you wiped the world clean.”

“And you...”

“And I know when a ship is taking on water, that it’s better to abandon before it sinks and pulls me down with it.”

Gabriel regards him again, eyes narrowed, wings outstretched behind him.

“You would abandon your family,” he says. “You would abandon your people,”

“There is little place for sympathy in a medical room,” William says, “when a limb needs amputating before it kills the rest of the body. Vega is a plague. It is reeking and sick and it has no hope surviving this world unless it is fixed. Unless the root of the problem is healed first.” William sets two trembling fingers to his temple and taps there. “It’s all in here. For all of them. Once their outdated theories and putrid morals are reversed, you will have an army, you will have followers and worshipers that you deserve.”

“An army,” Gabriel raises an eyebrow, and William feels himself start to laugh, a panicked response, nervous and trembling that spreads his lips in a grin before he tempers it.

“The two most powerful families in Vega must join by marriage one way or another. And there are only two of us eligible. You will have your army.”

“And you your warm bed?” Gabriel replies, but his expression has eased to one of a feline at rest, narrowed eyes and a languid smile. His wings stretch and tremble before he slowly folds set after set away, just his flight wings folded elegantly behind him when he steps back to regard the boy before him.

William collapses forward from the edge of the cliff, falling to bruised knees at the feet of the archangel. He has faced oblivion now and survived it. Death grasped him by the throat and pulled at him with savage winds and he survived that too. His body aches from fear, his bones from strain; his mouth tastes of burning tinfoil from adrenaline searing through his veins.

But there is strength in him yet. There is life, pulse pounding deafening inside his ears. There is a will in him that has not yet been broken and pulling from faith not in man or God but his own being, William leans forward from where he kneels, and he bows shaking before Gabriel.

“Anything you need from me. Anything I can do. Whatever it takes to prove myself, archangel, just say the word and you’ll have it.”

The boots do not move from William’s line of sight. They do not seek to kick or harm, they do not turn away indifferent. They stand, to be seen and to be looked at, to be understood that this, as he is, is how William will find himself before his master. He lifts his eyes, slowly, but not himself, and waits.

The boy is hardly worth the effort to kick from the eyrie. He has come, once, twice, a third time, and here, now, Gabriel has allowed himself to be seen. Ancient customs stick strong, he supposes. Decades upon centuries of allowance only after the third approach, if there ever was one. He has rarely been disappointed by such determination. This boy, for all his high claims and weak follow-through, is not a total loss. He has a voice, which can be manipulated. He has a body which can be used. He has access, always present, always seen, and right under the nose of Gabriel’s brother.

He will suspect, but he can do nothing.

“Do you feel caged?” Gabriel asks him, allowing for the boy to lift his head with a gesture of one hand. “Held behind bars you have been born into that you cannot hope to escape?”

William laughs, a single note. It is a weak sound, a tired sound, but he has breath enough to fuel it all the same. “I’ve lived all my life behind walls, and walls within those walls. Kept away from the streets until I sought them myself. Rarely permitted to leave Vega and even then not without a caravan of security.”

“Oh?”

“Unfortunate that we encountered a roving band of 8 Balls along the way here,” William murmurs. “Again. For the third time.”

Gabriel smiles at this, a slow and sinuous thing that seems as much a threat as an expression of pleasure. It would almost be more comfort to see him as a flaming throne or a wheel made of eyes, than to see something so far from human in a form that resembles man. William’s throat clicks, and he bows his head again.

“I was born into a cage. Teach me how to break out of it, archangel.”

“Up,” Gabriel commands, and his boots take him back towards the dais. William forces himself to stand as Gabriel sits and curls his fingers beneath his chin in thought. “All cages are built. Either by our hands or another’s, by what’s in the mind or what houses things safe within your body.”

Gabriel stretches his legs out in front of him and deliberately crosses one over the other.

“Cages are not eternal. As they are built, they can be broken. As they stitch back together, we can control how, and we can understand why. The cage, once broken, is never again the same. It never again has that power over us, if we are the ones to break it.” Gabriel tilts his head back and lets his fingers drop to his lap, tapping gently there. “You claim you bring me yourself?”

“Yes, and -”

“You would swear yourself to me?”

“Soul and body and heart -”

“None of those are yours yet to give, though, are they?” Gabriel muses. “Human bodies are useless, and their souls… their souls have never been theirs to begin with but…” He sits forward. “Your heart. That you can free and pledge to me. That, William Whele, I will accept as contract.”

William lifts a hand to his chest as he stands before the dais, fingers curling as if they might quiet the flutter within. He laughs, nervous, and he breathes deep. “I’d die.”

With a roll of his eyes, Gabriel leans forward, elbows on his knees, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Not handed to me on a platter, boy, I could rip it out myself if I wanted that.”

“Then -”

“Bring the tourniquet.”

William’s gaze snaps to the movement in his peripheral, one of the archangel’s minions departing to another room. It’s worse to keep his hand where it is, heart struggling as if attempting flight from this place and what may be coming, so William lets his fingers curl at his side instead. His tongue is dry as it parts cool lips, and when the lesser angel returns, it’s with a strip of cloth, and a lacquered dowel. He steps away as the angel comes toward him and only the impatient cluck of Gabriel’s tongue stops him from taking another.

“What are you going to do -” William stops and swallows the rest of his question. “What are you asking of me?”

“Your kind has only ever learned in one way, William Whele. Whether it be burning your fragile fingers by touching embers or seeing your cities collapse around you beneath brimstone,” Gabriel says. “Pain, boy. Pain is how you learn. Pain is how you remember what is most important to your survival.”

The angel steps closer and this time William doesn’t move. He allows his arms to be lifted. He allows the wide loop of cloth around his torso. He allows the dowel to be looped within it and then he jerks free, clasping it in his own hands instead as the nature of this lesson becomes immediately transparent. Lips curled over clenched teeth, he makes a sound that despite how weak it sounds before the archangel’s thunderous purr, encompasses all the turmoil that has driven William here in the first place.

“Let me,” he whispers, “if I’m going to learn what you want to teach.”

“If you’re to learn,” Gabriel replies, brow lifted, fingers pressing to his temple. “You must complete the task. If you do not, you will find yourself facing the wind again, without my mercy to stop it tearing you apart.”

“I’ll complete it.”

“I’ll be watching,” the angel smiles, splaying his fingers to return his minion back to the shadows from whence he came. From whence many more will come, William is certain. He swallows, turns his eyes to the archangel. There is no impatience in his gaze, there is a strange calm, an expectation. Should William take hours to do this to himself, then hours they will wait. Should he work quickly, his pain will be lasting but the torture leading to it will not.

Gabriel will not dictate how the boy is to mutilate himself for his own cause - he will merely make sure he follows through.

William’s jaw twitches, head ducked to keep hidden the sudden heat in his eyes, threatening to spill forth. There’s nothing more than cloth around him and a stick in his hand, and already he’s so close to tears? Pathetic. He is pathetic, and he deserves this. And if his ribs splinter and puncture his lungs - if he dies gasping here, choking on his own blood, a traitor, then he deserves that too.

His fate is no more in his own hands than it’s ever been, no matter what he told himself when he came here.

He twists the dowel once, twice. Another turn and the stiff cloth squeezes snug enough around him that his breath shortens, but he forces it deep. Now is not the time to panic. There will be opportunity for that later, in spades.

His shirt rumples beneath the cloth - he chose it specially for this meeting. Pressed black trousers and a black collared shirt, shined shoes and a tie. His Sunday best, nothing too presumptuous or casual. He envisioned at the time a meeting between equals.

He laughs, aching, as he turns the dowel again.

Gabriel watches. He says nothing, he does not rush, he does not comment. He watches. Humans have always been fascinating in their resilience, in their ability to withstand so much when their bodies are so frail and fragile. It takes nothing to break a human being in half physically, nothing at all but to carry them a few dozen feet into the air and drop them directly down. Breaking is easy. It’s the mind, the mental power, that Gabriel has always found genuinely beautiful.

Most minds have a limit. Those that do not are a level above humanity, a level that drives them at once to enlightenment and insanity.

Though, he could argue, watching as William tightens the dowel once more, pants a breath and does it again, that both are one and the same.

He wonders if this boy has the power to break himself and crawl from the wreckage. He wonders if he is worth his time to groom and use.

“When,” William breathes, “when do I stop?”

Gabriel closes his eyes for a moment, as the rising pitch of the little preacher’s breath seems to match the shrill wind outside his eyrie, and he says simply, “You’ll know.”

Pain etches sharp lines down William’s features, gathering creases in his brow, drawing up the muscles beneath his eyes. His lips remain parted, panting as he twists the dowel again and does not yield a sound of agony but only a sparse click in his throat. Wheezing, his breath slows, filling his lungs in a trickle rather than a rush.

Turn.

Turn.

Sweating palms slip against the dowel but he holds it so hard his knuckles whiten. If he loses his grip, he’ll have to start over. If he loses his strength now, he won’t find it again. He will find shame. Disappointment. He will find himself at the bottom of a fucking canyon in Colorado and no one will care.

Of that, he is certain. It is as real to him as the stabbing pain like little blades within his chest, twisting with every faltering breath. He hardly feels his bruised knees when the floor comes up beneath them and still, despite the weakness trembling his shoulders and the wetness on his cheeks, he winds the dowel again, and yelps, the sound ringing to silence against stone.

“I can’t,” he whispers, so faint Gabriel can hardly hear it from the dais.

It’s too much and too close and too tight and it hurts, it hurts _so much_. William’s hands are shaking, his cheeks heat not with a blush but the tears that run silent down them. He could let go. Maybe he should let go. If he is not worthy enough to do this, he is no warrior, he is no leader, he is no negotiator, no martyr.

He is a useless, stupid boy, trying to find praise from a father who doesn't care, a world that doesn’t see.

He is nothing.

So what does any of it really matter?

A splintering loud enough to ring across the chamber yields a sudden give in the fabric. William looks to the dowel in his hands, brow creasing when it sees it still whole. There is room now to twist. Turn. Again, again, but his hands don’t follow the commands of his mind as his thoughts drown beneath a siren-screech of pain that rises pulsing through his body. His breath won’t come at all now, a mockery of it only that passes his lips and goes no further before spilling free again.

Even that is a failure, and as his fingers slip from the dowel and the cloth spirals free from broken ribs, he slips to the floor in silence but for the wooden post that rolls across the stone.

A sound of footsteps, a whisper of wings and William is lifted from the ground. The ache follows, like some loathsome shadow, and he cries out before he can help it, and once that sound begins it does not end. Helpless wet sobs, too quick to pull air into his lungs, lungs half empty from the pain, refusing to fill. A long whine, drawn out and held with whatever air manages to slip through the agony holding William together.

He feels the wind against his face and cries harder, seeking with weak fingers against the leather he can feel press close to his cheek.

_I can do better_ , he wants to say. _I won’t disappoint you. I can try again. I will try again. Please -_

He feels like he is made of light. Made of the sun. Made of pain and nothing else.

And then it’s gone.

The wind and the sounds of rushing air, the slightly dank smell of the huge hallowed hall. All gone. Beneath him, William feels soft down and wool and velvet, and with a sob he curls in on himself.

“Brave boy,” Gabriel murmurs, drawing a hand over his sweaty forehead, carding fingers through his tangled hair, against his fevered scalp. “Brave, stubborn little thing.”

William tilts toward the touch, that bare comfort enough to spill goosebumps like cold rain down his skin. His torso feels too big and too small all at once, swollen and yet too tight for him to draw proper breath. It seems as though the world itself is quaking beneath him, trying to shake him from it for what he’s done, an oath sworn in sacred agony, a blasphemy against mankind.

He sat at his father’s feet as a child, and listened to him speak of the flood that purged all the sin of humanity from the earth. His lungs rattle wet as he draws a breath.

“I failed,” William whispers. “Let me try again, let me - I’ll prove -”

“Lay still.”

“I can - I will -”

“You have,” Gabriel murmurs, standing over the boy, setting a hand to his shoulder to hold him still as he tries to shift, as he causes himself more pain. It is entrancing. He shows his emotions so clearly when foolish ideals and pride fall to the wayside. He is a beautiful thing with his broken cage and little wings that he knows not how to unfurl yet.

Helpless.

Useful.

“Actions, William, speak volumes,” Gabriel tells him, his weight settling to the bed beside the damaged little preacher. “Actions are heard. Allegiances accepted. Mercy given.”

There is a laugh, strangled, as William watches the angel above him.

“I think I’m dying,” he responds, each shiver pulsing through his body pulling battered sinews too tight. He might have guessed it would come to this, really. Sacrificing himself in beseeching a higher power, and allowed to perish in pain as they watched. Isn’t that how it’s always been?

Why did he ever imagine that this would be any different?

But Gabriel’s touch tells him otherwise. Strong fingers, the same that held him at the mountain’s edge, now curl stroking through his hair. Again and again, worsening his shudder and then easing it to soft trembling instead. William cradles his sides and watches, vision blurred as if looking through water, as Gabriel reaches back with his other hand to retrieve a long, glinting feather from his wing. Sharp as razors and strong as steel, able to cut through cement and deflect bullets.

And William’s throat is so soft, his body so weak and frail. He makes a small sound, and into the pillow beneath him whispers a prayer to no one.

The angel laughs, but no cruelty comes along with it. No more pain, no more pressure, no nasty words. Instead, the feather is set to the soft and expensive fabric of his shirt and slid down it, parting the cloth as though it were never seamed at all.

“No.”

“Stay still, stubborn thing, you will hurt yourself more.”

Gabriel’s hands are cool against William’s pain-heated skin and he cries out even at the barest of touches. He can do nothing to defend his shirt from destruction, and piece by piece is it sliced from him, until he lays prone and bare, bruises already purpling his sides, blooming yellow against his chest.

Tears seep endless now, down William’s face, and he turns his cheek into the warm hand that touches him, when the archangel hushes him and whispers his name.

“Mercy and kindness is granted to those who obey,” he murmurs. “Those who are loyal. You never found grace in your father. You never found grace in yourself. I would not betray you by offering something I cannot give, nor will I lie. I cannot lie, William.” He strokes the tears from William’s face and tilts his own to watch him. “Look to me, and I will not let you fall as they have. Trust in me.”

William blinks, lashes heavy with tears, the water clearing from his eyes enough to see the archangel above him. There is not cruelty in his words, though William remembers well being told by his father to toughen up when he broke his arm as a child. There is no dismissal in his words, though William remembers well the deafening silence when he sought answers with clasped hands and roughened voice.

Tonight, now, he sacrificed and he prayed.

Tonight, now, his prayer is answered.

With a snap of light the feather catches flame and William squints against the sudden heat. As Gabriel raises it like a fiery sword, the sounds that rise from William’s throat seem not his own voice, a broken and childish whimper as the archangel brings it near. It lays against his skin in a warm embrace like none he’s ever known and then, William sobs, body wracked as it repairs itself beneath ash and flame.

It hurts, but it is a different ache. This is an ache of reminder, of soft touches his mother had bestowed on him before she died, soft kisses with friends when they were all children, comforting arms around him when he had had a nightmare, one of the maids always near to help him through. This is an ache of understanding, that any love must be fought for and won this way, that any kindness must be earned through broken bones and raw voice.

The ash smears against the sweat on his skin and covers the bruises there, it presses in and seeps against him like blood from a wound.

Gabriel had sacrificed that feather for him, he had used it on William to heal him. One of his own. A piece of himself, turned to ash to give William life again. He sobs, and this time it’s from an overwhelming feeling of being wanted. Needed. Worthy. 

He wants never to disappoint the archangel as he has so many others. He cannot. He will not.

This time when William breathes, his body sings with it. Every beat of his heart is a hymn to the one who finally finds him worthy, not only for his father’s money and his pretty words, but for what he can truly offer. Every tear is a blessing, given to him by the archangel.

Without thought for anything but gratitude for the grace and mercy Gabriel has shown him, William grasps his wrist as he did on the chasm’s ledge, and presses his lips beseeching to his palm.

How quickly pain is forgotten when it is smeared over by pleasure. How quickly is insult set aside when praise is given in its place. How easy it is to control a mind with kindness when it has known none.

Gabriel allows the touch, hums softly when William moves to kiss against his fingers, to the tips, smearing the healing ash against his lips and chin as he does. His eyes remain closed, reverent, worshipful. His breath comes trembling against Gabriel’s palm.

“What kindness would you have of me, my little preacher?” he asks.

Half-bare and trembling, brought to the brink of death twice and back again, and pressing his lips parted against an archangel’s fingers, William laughs, weak and wild.

“Anything?”

Gabriel hums. “Within my power, yes.”

“Lay with me?” William asks, throat clicking as he swallows and looks wide-eyed to Gabriel above him. He manages a smile, crooked and faltering, but isn’t he? Hasn’t he always been? And now given solace by the most sacred. “Just that. Just,” he laughs again, and wonders if this is what going mad feels like, “just to warm my bed?”

He’s shaking, adrenaline and pain and tears pulling from him the basest, most human responses his body can give. He is an innocent. Naive child. Proud and silly thing. Yet he is endearing - he is like a pup being trained.

Even dogs deserve rewards, to learn what to do to get them again.

Gabriel sets his hands on either side of William’s head and looms over him a moment, watching the way his eyes widen, the way his mouth opens. He notes the sound he makes, weak and little.

“And your being?” he asks, purring low and deliberate to see that blush bloom wild beneath William’s eyes. “Would you have me warm that as well?”

William hears the words in Claire’s voice, things she’s never spoken to him. Things she never will. Their childhood friendship has grown apart in separate towers, separate lives. And she now, too, among the damned by William’s actions and the hands that lift his eyes toward the archangel again.

Without looking away, he tilts his head. Gabriel’s hands are firm against his cold cheeks, warming away the chill. In answer, William curves his lips against the archangel’s palm again, and watches as his smile spreads wider.

“You surprise me, William. Would that you knew how rare that is after so many millenia.”

The preacher’s wild laugh is lost when Gabriel’s mouth closes his against his. Fluttering fingers rest feather-soft against the archangel’s cheeks as William’s lips part yielding. His body is whole and his thoughts are broken, fragments of scripture and rituals of worship tangling with the flame lit hot in his belly. Anything Gabriel asks of him, he will give. Anything Gabriel offers him, he will accept.

He has been born again beneath Gabriel’s wings, and he will be his archangel’s acolyte until the world falls around them.

**Author's Note:**

> We are so excited to be part of this exchange and this amazing fandom! Thank you so much for the opportunity, and we hope you like it, lovely secret commissioner!


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